


Coming Home

by ashthephoenix



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst, Fluff, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 07:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18734812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashthephoenix/pseuds/ashthephoenix
Summary: Simon is a superhero. Baz is a supervillian. They both think they know exactly where there lives are going.That is, until Simon shows up at Baz's front door, battered and bruised and looking for help.





	Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this prompt I saw on tumblr and couldn't get out of my head: https://crewdlydrawn.tumblr.com/post/184574681279/the-hero-shows-up-at-the-villains-doorstep-one
> 
> slight tw for implied/referenced attempted sexual assault. It's only hinted at, but stay safe kids.
> 
> This is my first work for this fandom, and my first published fanfic in several years, so this is exciting! Hope y'all enjoy!

**Baz**

Being a supervillain is kind of a pain in the arse.

Sure, there’s fun parts: no boss to answer to, cool weapons, doing whatever you feel like because everyone in town is terrified of you, but the downsides make it such a pain. I can’t walk down the street without someone noticing and calling the police (curse my decision to go without a mask), the costumes are tight and itchy and always look stupid once you put them on, no matter how much time you spent designing the damn thing, and you’re always getting taken down by those goody-two-shoes heroes. They drive me crazy.

Especially one hero in particular. Simon Snow, my arch-nemesis since our school days. I’ve hated him since we were kids, with that annoyingly earnest look he gets on his face that always makes him look like a puppy you know you’re about to kick, and his stupidly powerful telekinetic powers he can barely control, completely wasted on an idiot like him, and his stupid perfect face that always had every girl in class swooning all over him, and the adorable way he scrunches his nose when he’s angry and his freckles like constellations all over his body that I just want to trace with my tongue-

Scratch that, being a supervillain who’s stupidly in love with his arch-nemesis is the real pain in the arse.

So here I am in my apartment in the middle of London at 1 am, pining after a boy I can never have for a myriad of reasons, including but not limited to: he hates me, we’re on the opposite sides of the same war, my family would never approve, and he’s too good for me. Much, much too good for me.

I’m just about to work myself up to a real pity party when there’s a knock at the door.

I frown. Visitors at this time of night never bode well, but I go to the door anyway. I brace myself for anything.

Whatever I was expecting, it was not Simon bleeding Snow himself standing in my doorway. My lips instinctively curl up in a sneer, but I stop short from snapping at him as I take in his appearance.

He’s in a sweatshirt and joggers, but they’re filthy and ripped in places. There’s blood on his hands and on his face, but it’s hard to tell where it came from. Judging from the way he’s standing, something’s wrong with his right leg too. But the worst part is his eyes. They’re glassy and unfocused, an obvious sign that he’s been drugged, confirmed by the way he sways like he can’t keep himself upright. A wave of protective anger surges inside me and I have to stifle the urge to go searching for whoever did this to him and burn them to a crisp.

“Snow, what-” I cut myself off. I’m not even sure what question I was going to ask.

Snow’s eyes focus on me for a second and I see a look of pure fear on his face. I’ve seen him risk his life countless times over the time I’ve known him, and I have never seen him this scared. “didn’t know where else to go…” he mumbles before finally giving into gravity and toppling over.

I don’t think.

Before I can process making a decision I’ve already swept him into a bridal carry, carried him into my living room and deposited him on the couch. I start to turn around when I feel him grab my hand. He looks up at me with pleading eyes. “Don’t leave,” he croaks, his voice a hoarse whisper.

“I’m just leaving for a second, I just need to grab the first aid kit and a washcloth, okay?” I say, realizing as I say it that it’s the softest I’ve ever spoken to him, but I can’t bring myself to snap at him when he’s like this. His grip loosens and I slip away to find what I need.

When I come back a minute later, I find Snow curled in on himself, shivering. The room isn’t cold, and he’s always been a human space heater, so it must be shock setting in.

I sit down next to him and gently pry his hand from where its curled around his arm. He looks up at me and relief floods his face. I have to remind myself that it isn’t real, he’s only being like this because he’s delirious from pain and drugs, once the drugs wear off it will back to the usual suspicious glances and accusing words. Everything back to normal. 

Except now I know what his hands feel like in my own, what it feels like to have his attention and trust in me, only me. Christ, this might kill me.

He dozes as I clean and bandage his wounds, only rousing when I prod him into helping me take his sweatshirt off him. It mostly seems to be heavy bruising with some cuts and scrapes, but I make a note to make him go to the hospital tomorrow, just in case. 

Or not, since tomorrow he’ll go back to hating me. I curse myself and my ridiculous heart.

He seems to be out cold, and I figure now would be a good time to leave him some painkillers and retreat to my room, and hope in the morning he has the decency to leave instead of barging into my room and accusing me of all sorts of plots.

That hope is dashed when I come back from the kitchen with a glass of water and some pills and see blue eyes blinking up at me, bleary with sleep but looking much more focused and alert than when he first appeared at my door.

It takes him a moment to come back to himself and his eyes fly open wide in panic. “Huh? What’s-- that wasn’t a--” he whips his head around and his breaths become shallow pants, and a couple of the items on my coffee table start to shake.

I rush over to him before I can think better of it, dumping what I’m holding on the coffee table. “It’s okay, you’re okay now, you’re safe.” I soothe with quiet little nothings, hovering around him, wanting to touch but not wanting to take advantage of him when I know he’d hate me for it later.

He jerks his head up after a moment as if suddenly registering my presence. “Baz…” he says my name and I brace myself, expecting the worst. The last thing I’m expecting is for him to launch himself at me, grabbing two fistfuls of my shirt and starting to sob into my chest. 

I stand there, frozen, for a moment before hesitantly bringing my arms up to hold him close. We stand there, him sobbing into my shirt and me rubbing his back and making soothing sounds, for who knows how long before his crying begins to subside. He pulls away from me, sniffling, and I call up my best sneer.

“Done getting snot all over my shirt then?” I say, but to my surprise, he doesn’t get defensive and start blustering like we would usually. Instead, he actually seems worried.

“‘M sorry…” he mumbles, shifting a little more away from me. My grip on him tightens instinctively, and he looks up in surprise. Fuck. I drop him abruptly and step away.

“What in the hell happened to you, Snow? And why in God’s name did you come to me about it?” 

He draws in a breath, rubbing at his eyes. “Was at a bar. Some dude drugged my drink. Beat the shit out of me in an alley when I put up a fight.” I’m surprised he’s actually answering. If it were me I’d be halfway to the nearest tube station by now, bad leg or no bad leg.

And then the words actually sink in, the implications distressingly clear, and I have to resist the urge all over again to find that asshole and bash his skull in. I have to hold myself back from pulling a Snow and growling.

Snow’s eye go wide again and I realize I’m glowering in his direction. I smooth out my expression back to as close I can manage to bored neutrality after the revelation that the man I love could have been… I violently push that thought from my mind.

I realize that I can’t bear to look at Simon Snow, my beautiful disaster, right now so I turn on my heel and hurry off to the kitchen. 

“Where are you going?” he says, some of the suspicion I’m familiar with returning to his voice.

I call over my shoulder. “I’m making us some tea, of course.” he trails after me like a lost puppy, limping a bit but not too terribly, and I breathe an internal sigh of relief. “You still haven’t answered my other question. Why did you come here? Couldn’t you have gone to Bunce, or Wellbelove, or any other member of your merry band of misfits?” I sneer derisively. Trying to banter with him while also making him tea feels strange, but I have to maintain some degree of normality.

He just shrugs. 

“What does that mean?” I ask, frustrated,. I swear, half of his sentences are shrugs.

“Means I don’t know. I trust you, I guess.”

“Trust me? I’ve tried to kill you on several occasions, if you’ll remember.” God his self preservation instinct is terrible. Or maybe it isn’t, considering I’d never actually hurt him.

“Well I’m not dead, so…” he shrugs again. “Guess I made the right choice.”

How is it that I’m in love with this beautiful catastrophe.

I hand him his tea, and he smiles at me, a little, shy thing, a far cry from his usual grin. “Thanks. For the tea and for not killing me.”

Oh, right. That’s how.

“Well I can’t have you dying with nobody around to witness it. When I defeat you I’ll be sure the entire world is there watching.” I say, trying to come up with some excuse for my actions tonight besides ‘I’m desperately in love with you and can’t bear the thought of you suffering.’

I expect Simon to fire back some poorly thought out comeback, but he doesn’t. He just stares intensely at his mug. “I don’t think I want to fight you.” he says quietly. I scoff to hide the hope blossoming inside me. 

“Don’t confuse one moment of pity with some kind of moral epiphany,” I sneer. “I’m evil, remember?”

Snow’s head shoots up. “But you’re not.” he says, eyes flashing. “You let me in and bandaged my wounds. You held me while I cried!” I open my mouth, not sure what I’m going to say in defense, but he cuts me off before I can figure it out.

“You’ve never seriously hurt me while we fought. For that matter, I can’t remember you seriously hurting anyone! You control fire, that’s not exactly a power that makes it easy to not hurt people.” he’s right. I don’t like hurting people, especially not civilians. I do what I have to do because of my responsibility to my family, no more no less.

I fire back. “You know as well as me us fighting is inevitable. I’m bad, you’re good. I’m a Pitch, you’re the Mage’s Heir. We’ll fight, and I’ll lose, because good always defeats evil, and I know that!” I don’t know why I’m saying this. Maybe because it’s the early hours of the morning and I’m burned out from exhaustion and worry and the tension of having Simon Snow at my kitchen table, but whatever the reason is, it’s out there now and there’s no taking it back. “I know that.” I say again, quieter this time.

Simon stares. “Baz…” he says.

“What?” I snarl back at him, wishing my power was to turn back time instead, then I wouldn’t have to deal with actually confronting my feelings.

He shakes his head. He says in a small voice, “I don’t feel good, most of the time. I’m not a hero, I’m a ticking time bomb. I want to help people but most of the time they just end up as collateral damage to taking down whatever big bad the Mage has pointed me at this time. I… I don’t wanna do this anymore.”

He looks so small with his shoulders hunched, curled in around his tea like it’s the only thing keeping him from floating off into space. Acting impulsively, I grab his hands, setting down the mug before taking them in my own. He looks up, his eyes searching mine.

“So don’t. You feel more like the Mage’s weapon than a hero? Then you don’t need to follow him. You can be a hero without him. Simon, you’re the most good person I know. Your morals are unshakeable, I’ve always known that about you. The fact that you’re even thinking about all this proves that to me. Realizing you’re doing the wrong thing and wanting to change that doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you the best kind of person.” He smiles at me, his voice teasing but his eyes deadly serious.

“If I’m a good person, then you have to be too. Fair’s fair.”

He thinks I’m good. If Simon Snow thinks I’m good, then it has to be true.

We’ve both leaned forward at some point, and now he’s close enough to kiss. I want to kiss him. I shouldn’t kiss him, he’s just been through a traumatic experience, he’s just been drugged, we’ve just established some kind of tentative truce, I can’t ruin that by kissing him. 

I need to stop thinking about kissing him.

I can’t stop thinking about kissing him.

And then he kisses me.

Whenever I’ve imagined kissing Simon (which is more than I’d care to admit), it’s always been a violent thing, our mouths fighting for dominance, teeth clashing, filled with anger or hatred or desire. 

Our first kiss is nothing like that. It starts chaste, a sweet brush of lips, but even as we grow bolder, deepening it, it stays a simple exploration, languid, tongues brushing and hands wandering.

Kissing Simon Snow doesn’t feel like fireworks.

Kissing Simon Snow feels like coming home.

We break apart for air but we don’t move far, leaning our foreheads against each other and simply breathing each other in. I look into Simon’s eyes and see the wonder that I’m feeling mirrored back at me.

He giggles, breathless. I think it’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. Somehow during the kiss we moved so that now I’m straddling his lap while he sits, hands on my hips.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that for.” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.

“I have no idea how long _I’ve_ wanted to do that for.” he says.

I pull my head back a bit and laugh. “Only you could be that thick.” I say.

He frowns teasingly. “You know, I could dump you on the floor right now.”

“If you do, I’m not kissing you again.” I threaten, even though I think we both know that isn’t true.

“Can’t have that.” he leans up and kisses me again. 

The second kiss is just as good as the first.

So is the third, and the fourth, and the fifth, and all the ones after that.

After a while, our kisses become more yawn than kiss, and I pull back. Simon makes an aggrieved noise.

I glare at him playfully. “We’re both knackered. C’mon, time for bed. We can continue this in the morning.”

I lead him to my bedroom, carefully making sure he’s actually doing better and isn’t just hiding his pain because he’s a stubborn git, and he immediately plops down on my bed, grinning up at me and wiggling his eyebrows like some kind of caveman. I hit him with a pillow. “Snow. Sleep. You’re exhausted.”

“You called me Simon earlier.” he says as he strips down to his pants. I immediately regret my decision at the sight of him shirtless before me, my fingers itching to touch. But I sigh and follow his lead.

“No I didn’t.” I say as I grab pyjamas like a civilized person before turning off the lights and crawling into bed.

We’re both asleep before we can say anything else.

**Simon**

I wake up to the feeling of a head perched on my chest and an arm thrown over my waist, hand gripping my hip lightly. I’m confused for a moment as my eyes flutter open, but the moment I see inky black hair, the memories come flooding back to me.

I’m in bed with Baz Pitch.

I _kissed_ Baz Pitch.

I want to kiss Baz Pitch _again_.

I can feel the twinges of pain from the cuts and bruises all over my body, and I’m almost grateful for them. Would I have done that if I hadn’t been still a little hazy from whatever that guy slipped me? Maybe, maybe not. Do I regret it? Not for a second. The only thing I regret is not getting my head out of my arse sooner.

Looking back on our school days, it’s almost painfully obvious I was into him. I was so obsessed. He was all I ever talked about, I followed him around constantly, I was always complaining about his perfect hair and his perfect face and his perfect everything. Jesus, I was pathetic. I’m so lucky that Baz even wants me.

Baz wants me. He thinks I’m good, and wants to kiss me, and maybe even date me. I bask in the bliss of that for a moment.

I can tell the moment Baz wakes up and realizes what’s going on, because he stiffens. He slowly pulls his arm back and rises to a sitting position. He looks at me, his expression guarded.

“Snow.” he says, his voice as cool as ice. Oh no, he’s not getting away with pretending last night never happened. He wants this as much as I do and we both know it.

Instead of responding, I grin and prop myself up on my elbows. I reach out, grabbing on to his shirt (silk, the pompous arsehole), and I pull his face down to meet mine. For a moment, his lips are unresponsive against mine, and I start to draw back, worried I’d misjudged. Then in a flash his lips are on mine again, pressing insistently against mine.

This kiss is more intense than the ones last night. He kisses me like he can’t get enough, like he’s dying of thirst and my lips are the only source of water for miles. He kisses me like he thinks he’ll never get the chance again.

When I draw back for air, he stares at me, his eyes a mixture of awe and fear, so unlike his usual mask. “Baz?” I ask, “Why do you look like you think I’m gonna punch you or something?”

His expression immediately clears. “Nothing, it’s nothing.” he says, reaching for me again.

I grab his hands. “Baz.” I say warningly. “Don’t. If we’re gonna do… whatever this is, you have to talk to me.”

Baz raises an eyebrow at me. “And what, exactly, is ‘whatever this is’?” he sneers. He’s deflecting, using his ‘I-think-you’re-an-idiot’ look to get me to stop asking questions. Well I’m not backing down, he’s given me that look enough times that at this point I’m practically immune.

“No, you’re not getting away with it that easy. I’m not moving an inch until you tell me what’s wrong.” I sit up, crossing my arms over my chest and trying to look disapproving. I think I just end up pouting.

“Snow.” he says, exasperated. “You’re being childish.” Yep, definitely pouting. I don’t say anything in response, just pout a bit harder.

He stares at me for a minute, then sighs, hanging his head a little. “I’m afraid for when you leave, okay?” he says, frustration tingeing his voice. 

“When I leave?” I say, confused. It’s not like I’m going to vanish the moment I walk out the door, and he can talk to me whenever he wants once I give him my number.

“Yes, Snow, when you leave. Once you go, I’m going to be alone again, and I don’t…” he trails off, scrubbing a hand through his hair. 

Oh.

He thinks I’m not coming back.

How can someone so smart be so stupid?

I take his face in my hands, making him look at me. “Baz, you’re an idiot. You think I’m just going to leave? I’ve got you now. I’ve finally got you where I want you, and there’s nothing in this world that could keep me away.”

And then we’re kissing again. We’re kissing like we’re the only two people in the world that matter, and there’s nowhere in the world we’d rather be. 

We kiss, and it feels like coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> Is that how date rape drugs work? I have no idea! I'm chalking any weirdness up with that/Simon's injuries with 'he's a superhero so it affects him differently'
> 
> Also I feel like Simon's line of "I've finally got you where I want you" is vastly underappreciated in this fandom so I worked it in.
> 
> Anyway if you love these boys as much as I do, come yell about them with me at my tumblr @ashthephoenix, or my largely inactive writing tumblr that I'm reviving @I-guess-I-write-shit-now


End file.
